A team from the Huntsville Center for Technology first competed in NASA's Great Moonbuggy Race in 2002, and ended up dragging the buggy across the finish line.

Since 2006, though, center teams have placed in the top 3 of the high school competition, said Tim White, the precision machining instructor at the Center for Technology and the moonbuggy project sponsor.

The center is participating in the 18th annual moonbuggy race April 1-2 at the U.S. Space & Rocket Center, and is fielding four teams. More than 80 high school and college teams have entered the competition, and the teams must design, build and race their human-powered buggies, which must carry two students over a half-mile simulated lunar terrain course.

"It's a great project," White said Monday after a new photograph showing two team members from the Center for Technology was unveiled at the space center's moonbuggy exhibit. "It pulls the whole school together." Even some of White's former students return to help with the welding.

Under the photograph - taken by David Higginbotham, a photographer with Marshall Space Flight Center Information Technology Services - are the words: "Leadership, Teamwork and Technology, Huntsville Center for Technology."

The photograph "depicts years of hard work, sweat and willingness to move our efforts forward," said Joy Dukemineer, the center's counselor, in a release. "Our students went from zero to hero during the past few years. We were dead last but kept trying. Each year we improved our model and our efforts and students caught the vision for success."

Karen Wittenborg, a senior at Huntsville High School, and Ezra Logreira, a senior at Grissom High School, are shown in the photograph. They have been making practice runs with the moonbuggy since November.

"Ezra and I have been pushing each other," said Wittenborg, explaining that teamwork is so important in getting prepared for competition. "You have to work together."

Attending the unveiling were Dr. Ann Roy Moore, superintendent of Huntsville City Schools, school board president Topper Birney and school board member Jennie Robinson.